Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy

Posted By: airforce

Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 04/28/2011 04:30 PM

I've eaten a lot of things that some folks would consider weird, but I've never had the slightest desire to eat an armadillo. And, to be truthful, I wouldn't have a clue how to skin the ugly armored critters, even if I did want to eat one.

Well, that's maybe a good thing. According to the New England Journal of Medicine , armadillos are almost certainly the source of leprosy in about 1/3 of the cases of leprosy seen in Texas and Louisiana. Many of these folks have never traveled to Mexico or Central America, where most cases of leprosy are seen in North America are contracted. It is also endemic in India, Brazil, and the Philippines.

If caught early, leprosy (Hansen's disease) is treatable with antibiotics. But still, if you're tempted to skin and eat one, don't.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Posted By: Texas Resistance

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 04/28/2011 04:46 PM

Thanks for the information Airforce. Many times I have had to pull my dogs out of armadillo holes and then had to pull out bit off roots that were stuck across the roofs of their mouths. Next time I need to put on rubber gloves. I am lucky I never got it. I have heard some hog hunters and some coon hunters whip their dogs for going after armadillos. When I was a kid one time on a bet I chased down an armadillo and picked it up for fun.

Posted By: airforce

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 04/28/2011 04:51 PM

I once shot an armadillo that was rooting around in the garden. But really, their major nemesis seems to be cars. It seems like they just can't quite make it across a road. Some years around here, the highways are littered with them.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Posted By: airforce

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 04/28/2011 07:54 PM

Apparently, it\'s not real easy to catch. It requires frequent handling of armadillos or eating them. Neither of which I plan to do.

Quote

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "Now we have the link," said James Krahenbuhl, who heads a government leprosy program that led the new study.

The ancient scourge of primitive man is rarely fatal today. Called Hansen's disease, leprosy is easily curable with prompt treatment.

There are only 150 leprosy cases reported each year in the U.S. Even then, it's mostly among travelers to places such as India, Brazil and Angola where it's more common.

Armadillos are one of the very few mammals that harbor the bacteria that cause the sometimes disfiguring disease, which first shows up as an unusual lumpy skin lesion.

An international team of scientists have published their findings in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. They think it requires frequent handling of armadillos or eating their meat for leprosy to spread.

DNA samples were taken from 33 wild armadillos in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, where they're sometimes referred to as "hillbilly speed bumps" because they're often run over by cars.

Scientists took skin biopsies from 50 leprosy patients. Three-quarters had never had foreign exposure, but lived in Southern states where they could have been exposed to armadillos.

Further analysis found that samples from the patients and armadillos were genetically similar to each other and were different from leprosy strains found elsewhere in the world. The unique strain was found in 28 armadillos and 25 patients.

Of the 15 patients for whom researchers had information, seven said they had no contact with armadillos; eight said they did, including one who routinely hunted and ate them....

Onward and upward,
airforce

Posted By: Breacher

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 05/02/2011 12:03 AM

It's a southern thing about eating wild critters, and since the deer they have are pretty small and stringy, not the big healthy corn fed animals you see up north which are considered "bonus livestock" by farmers, or a nuisance (they chow down on a lot of farm grain) which makes year round hunting fairly well tolerated.

So in the south, the ecosystem is actually more wild, and people get into this "have you tried ______", and every once in a while someone finds something they like, smothered in enough oil, garlic and spices to disguise what it had been anyway. Looks like there is enough reason now to just skip the armadillo.

Posted By: McMedic

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 05/02/2011 10:23 AM

Armadillo = Possum on the half shell!

Seriously though, I've never eaten one. I'll have to be REAL hungry to start.

Posted By: shawri

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 05/02/2011 03:56 PM

Armadillos usually try to scare things by jumping a couple feet in the air. Its pretty effective on a well-soused GI from Ill.,( I laughed my butt off at him), but doesn't work too well on fast moving cars. I've never been able to look at them as food, but they do provide entertainment at times. I have known people who ate them, but only once, and they didn't want to repeat it.

Posted By: Flight-ER-Doc

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 05/02/2011 07:21 PM

They don't move too well in barracks with hardwood floors, either. They do scratch the hell out of it, for the poor shmuck that has to buff it out.

I don't know what is 'new' about this report: I'd learned that Armadillos carried and were a reservoir for leprosy many years ago (before med school - before being stationed in Wichita Falls, Tx).

Anyway, live, learn.

Posted By: airforce

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 05/02/2011 07:27 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Flight-ER-Doc:
...I don't know what is 'new' about this report: I'd learned that Armadillos carried and were a reservoir for leprosy many years ago (before med school - before being stationed in Wichita Falls, Tx)....

It was known they carried a strain of leprosy, but it took some DNA sequencing to confirm that this strain was being transmitted to humans. I think.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Posted By: Texas Resistance

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 05/02/2011 08:10 PM

Yes, it was know that armadillos often had leprosy and that humans might catch it from them but before the DNA testing mentioned the ability of humans to catch it from armadillos was not as well proven.

Posted By: safetalker

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 05/03/2011 05:52 AM

Here at Ft Bragg we used to have to conduct a class to try and keep some Yankee city boy from petting the cute little things when we got to Florida for the Annual FTX.
One who didn'y listen picked one up which was in protective mode and put it into his sleeping bag.
That night when he came off shift he opened the bag and reached in and surprised the little dude.
The screams woke me and when I got there his hand was inside an the creature had rolled up again and was chewing.
We hit it with a hammer to stop the chewing and then the Fire extinguisher blasts for a while till it opened and dropped and ran.
The lad lost two fingers and most of the meat and tendons in his hand.
Next class was a simple film of his ordeal taped by another soldier.
Then to add insulting pain to dumb pain he had to get the 21 shots to the gut for Rabbis.
The Seminoles don't eat them, there is no place I have ever seen a family way to cook them.
Their highest use seems to be to keep sleepy drivers awake in North Florida.

Posted By: airforce

Re: Armadillos A Source Of Leprosy - 06/03/2011 06:36 PM

I just watched an episode of Dual Survival where Cody (the guy with braids) and the other guy ate an armadillo in the Panamanian jungle. Better them than me. I actually spent some time in Panama back in 1976 (that was probably before most of you were even born!), and I can tell you there are other things to eat. And they actually cleaned and gutted that thing in a stream, so other food was undoubtedly pretty close by.

A friend found a recipe for alligator gar on the internet, and printed it out for me. Um, no thanks. I'm not particularly squeamish, but if I need freakin' tin snips to skin something, I'm not particularly wild about eating it. And some things are just too damn ugly to eat anyway. Case in point, the alligator gar.

Onward and upward,
airforce